Well, Threetoe's stories
aren't exactly hidden. For a bonus, Toady even throws an "analysis" section on the bottom that tends to be a pretty concise "what we have learned today" section, although what Toady infers and what any other reader infers is necessarily going to be different.
Stories like Root talk explicitly about the nature of animal people and their relation to the mysterious forest deity, and Snatcher is explicitly about goblin and elven cultures.
So... elves...
The problem with the ways that people tend to talk about things like the magical races, and especially things like magical plants, is that people tend to want to grasp at the mundane and technical things rather than accept some of the broader implications of the magical.
Elves, I feel, are interesting because of their reliance on an ecological "infrastructure". I think of their cities as being carefully-managed rainforest-based arcologies, and that elvish immortality has an important genetic impetus, because it takes a species of eternal gardeners to preserve and enhance such a complex and delicate system. Modding them properly into the game would likely be far more of a challenge than adding even the most baroque dwarf civilization, due to the fact that if a dwarf wants a nail, she learns to forge the metal they have available into a desired shape with specific characteristics, more or less; while an elf in the same predicament, plants a six-penny seed.
[...]
Now, it is clear that we need a thread discussing the mental makeup of other races, which I'm currently trying to think up a good name for and thus defer to whoever is first on that front. Secondly, it is certainly going to affect this discussion, particularly with the eventual fortresses for other races planned which we arguably now have the bare basics for. It would help vastly if we had a stickied thread which contained the collected knowledge on each race from toady and threetoe sources, as I'm under the impression that goblins are demons on the lower end of the hiearchy and need their kidnapped children to overthrow inevitable lordly demon rulers, and i know fuck all about the nature spirits with the elves and something about fae folk from other planes with the kobolds, let alone trolls. I suggest said sticky is referenced on matters of race from here on out.
Elves are perhaps best described as the Na'vi from Avatar to a greater extreme.
In their world, animals are not only capable of talking but share in a near-sentience, and the great spirit of the forest is a sort of magical hive mind to give a rather literal sense of mother nature.
Elven culture, at least at its initial inception, is all about living in communion with this nature spirit.
The spirit is capable of moving the trees as it sees fit, as seen especially in Snatcher, (which I'll reference more later,) where the nature spirit literally decides whether or not to catch an elf that slips. The elf can call out to the trees, but the nature spirit can decide whether to listen or not. (This, in turn implies a bit of
the contract magic concept, where magic is a compact with a spirit or god that can be exited by the will of the contracted spirits that supply the magical power. The magic of the spirits will obey the invoker only for as long as they are furthering the goals of the spirits in question, and the contract can be terminated on abruptly short notice. Of course, the spirits of the elven nature deities seem to be of a more meddling sort than most.)
Root pretty clearly indicates that elven culture doesn't necessarily always hold to these traditions, however.
The druids and princesses in that story live outside of the "pure" form of elven hypothetical culture via "decadence", but that doesn't mean that other influences can't force changes in their outlook on life, either.
If we are talking about what it means to have cultural overlap, however,
Snatcher is far more interesting, as it covers both the concept of a half-elf/half-goblin, but also what it means to slip between cultural worlds.
Durangel has the cultural imprints mostly from the goblin side of her upbringing. However, while Durangel has some remaining memory of how to climb a tree, it's notable that the pure-goblin and seemingly purely goblin-culture-indoctrinated Ashnak actually seems to have a greater understanding for and respect of the elven culture and its spirits than anyone else. Ashnak is very deliberately straddling the two cultures (even when his motives for how and why he came to do so are not really explained, although the result of the child is rather obvious) and purposefully went to great lengths to cross-pollinate the cultures in his offspring, as well.
All of this I'm going to bring back to make a point that the nature spirit elves worship is a force of stasis, but the elves themselves are not exactly the same. They can obviously deviate from the strict teachings of their spirit, but, again with the notion of the contract magic, they can face a severe consequence for doing so. When this actually takes place, however, seems to be mutable. The spirit itself may possibly be influenced, or negotiated with, or make concessions on principle in the short-term towards achieving more over-arching goals.
Ashnak was capable of invoking the nature spirit against what seemed to be the interests of the elves, even when, as a goblin, he "should have been the enemy". This implies a collusion between Ashnak, Panthera, and, of all things, the Nature Spirit for a longer-term purpose of a blending of goblin and elf in Durangel, although to what ultimate purpose this was supposed to serve, the short story is a little too short to explain. Perhaps the nature spirit saw a purpose in trying to goblinize the elves or elvenize the goblins - especially if a goblin threat was looming, taking a chance to purposefully warp the culture of the elves and/or goblins to prevent a long-term destruction of the elves/forest/powerbase of the spirit and nature may have been worth the sacrifices.
The Assassination of Zecalo Bronzeflower, for example, shows the possibility of spreading an "evil" biome by demon-led goblins, and the Nature Spirit may be making a long-term insurance policy against something as cataclysmic to the survival of its native forest as a purely destructive goblin force that may come to terraform the forests into an evil biome.
The goblins depicted in snatcher, the ones who were high-level leaders, at least, were interested in technology like grind wheels, which implied they weren't just thinking in terms of the Might Makes Right dogma of basic goblin thought, either.
To speak of how this plays out...
The current elven orchard thing Toady is programming seems to be a part of this stasis-by-magic concept. Elves don't need to farm normally or deforest because the trees just provide because magic.
However, elves are also obviously at least capable of not only sliding away from this because of decadence, but also because of necessity. Elves live outside their elven communities with humans/dwarves/goblins all the time even now, and adopt the cultures of their hosts. They also host others within their retreats, which come to function like them.
I'm somewhat reminded of the older stories of elves as "those taken by the fae". Basically, that they are ultimately just descended of humans who were taken by, and shaped by, the fae spirits of the woods. Removed from this influence, they are still changelings - they still have some fae marks upon them, but they can still be at least somewhat human. They're just always the changed ones. Over generations, however, that would fade completely. Myth and history is full of claims of kings and emperors descended from heavenly, fae, or demonic beings, but where they are ultimately just humans with a bit of a past that might give claims to some access to a magical power. (Many "wizards" of Chinese/Japanese legends are descendant of a youkai like a kitsune. Even Merlin was supposedly born of an incubus.)
Without the fae influence, they lose the keystone of their initial culture. Even in contact with it, that Nature Spirit seems capable of more complex thought than one might initially give it credit for. (If it is a nature spirit, it must, ultimately, learn to adapt, after all, for nature is nothing if not vicious against those who refuse to adapt.)
Elves facing a real reason to change, be it long, grueling war against goblins, or simply seeing the equally scary prospect of a human/dwarven/advanced technocratic goblin society encircling and nipping away at their domain because of simple lack of care for what their nature spirit is and how it is powered (as with dwarves who chop down forests) may change by necessity. If the elves' ability to economically keep the humans at bay relies upon a textile industry and its improvements, to trade for their armaments they need to defend their lands, and to keep themselves a valuable enough trade partner to forestall the hoards of deforesting potential farmers, then it would mean a potential drastic shift in their culture.
It's completely unclear just how flexible the Nature Spirit might be. Perhaps it would help forest spiders become some farmable tame creature that spins silk straight to the elves' looms, and dictate the exact terms and prices of the assistance nature gives, turning elves into highly sensitive gardeners of a delicately nuanced farm. Perhaps it would adamantly forestall any such "perversion" of its powers, however.
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Topic: Hard facts on Sapients (Read 11402 times)